[teeray]

> At some point, some layer (probably multiple layers) are going to have to interpret that sequence of 1s and 0s into a particular shape

You do it once, at the application border. Doing it multiple times, in multiple layers, is a path to madness.

[cartoffal]

My point was more that the layers below the application will also have to parse the data into a particular format - in the case of networked applications, into TCP/IP packets, then anything particular to the message protocol, before hitting the application. And then the application will, at runtime (regardless of whether you are using a type safe language or not) have to parse and validate the shape of the data before it can be used.